Stones Cry Out reports on much ado about nothing in the Washington Post:
Yet there’s lots of chatter in the blogosphere, but little coverage in the mainstream media, of a study that suggests the early exit polls that showed Kerry beating Bush may have been accurate after all. The study, conducted on behalf of U.S. Count Votes, a non-partisan but left-leaning non-profit organization.
Let’s have a look at their conclusions, shall we?
But in some ways they seem to be playing a game, too, because the study clearly leaves the impression that the authors believe there was wholesale fraud in the 2004 presidential election.
The methodology and math of the study are far too complicated to get into in detail here. But here is a link to the entire study for your reading pleasure.
Among other things, the study reports that some of the largest discrepancies between exit polls and final vote tallies occurred inexplicably in battleground states.
I’ll revisit this post after reading the report, but here are my initial thoughts:
We have a case in which a sample varied significantly from the population. On the face, we are faced with three possibilities:
- The sample was accurate, but a statistical outlier
- The sample was accurate, and the population inaccurate
- The sample was inaccurate, and the population was accurate
It appears that the first goal of this report is to rule out option #1. Fair enough; I’ll agree whole-heartedly with ruling out option #1. However, I suspect the report spends the rest of its pages supporting option #2 over option #3. To wit:
Among other things, the study reports that some of the largest discrepancies between exit polls and final vote tallies occurred inexplicably in battleground states.
“This discrepancy between exit polls and the official election results has triggered a controversy which has yet to be resolved,” according the report.
If true, this analysis again has multiple explanations. The report chooses to favor option #2 (above), and probably goes to great length trying to support that conclusion. However, what the report implies as “wholesale vote fraud” I propose is actually “wholesale exit poll fraud”. Which is more plausible? Top-to-bottom coordination across state lines to throw the election to Bush through vote fraud, or misleading exit poll data?
Looking at the 2000 election, incorrectly – and prematurely – calling Florida for Gore suppressed the Bush vote in the yet-to-close Florida panhandle precincts, and in a ripple effect suppressed the Bush vote across the rest of the country. Might it be plausible to think that someone concluded that a similar tactic could be used to “throw” the election for Kerry, by reporting biased exit poll data indicating a Kerry victory, with the assumption that such flawed data would become a self-fulfilling prophecy by once again suppressing the Bush vote across the country? If I recall correctly, the 2004 exit poll data over-sampled demographics that indicated biased results in favor of Kerry. (Which, if true, would really be more Option #1, with intentional, malicious intent.)
More later…
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